DEBATE BLOGGING: GIULIANI AND OSAMA.

The Republican debate has, remarkably, come to center around why the terrorists attacked us. And Romney, Giuliani, and the rest of the non-Paul contenders are furiously rejecting the idea that our foreign policy had anything to do with. Giuliani put the panel's wisdom best when he said, "our foreign policy is irrelevant, totally irrelevant. If you read what they write, listen to what they say. They hate how we live, what we stand for, our freedoms." He went on to name all the wonderful freedoms they loathe -- our respect for women, our speech, our ecumenicism. So let's ask the question: Has Giuliani read Osama's writing, listened to his speeches? Because here's what I remember him arguing:

Before I begin, I say to you that security is an indispensable pillar of human life and that free men do not forfeit their security, contrary to Bush's claim that we hate freedom. If so, then let him explain to us why we don't strike for example – Sweden? And we know that freedom-haters don't possess defiant spirits like those of the 19 – may Allah have mercy on them.No, we fight because we are free men who don't sleep under oppression. We want to restore freedom to our nation, just as you lay waste to our nation. So shall we lay waste to yours. [...] So I shall talk to you about the story behind those events and shall tell you truthfully about the moments in which the decision was taken, for you to consider. I say to you, Allah knows that it had never occurred to us to strike the towers. But after it became unbearable and we witnessed the oppression and tyranny of the American/Israeli coalition against our people in Palestine and Lebanon, it came to my mind. The events that affected my soul in a direct way started in 1982 when America permitted the Israelis to invade Lebanon and the American Sixth Fleet helped them in that. This bombardment began and many were killed and injured and others were terrorized and displaced. I couldn't forget those moving scenes, blood and severed limbs, women and children sprawled everywhere. Houses destroyed along with their occupants and high rises demolished over their residents, rockets raining down on our home without mercy. The situation was like a crocodile meeting a helpless child, powerless except for his screams. Does the crocodile understand a conversation that doesn't include a weapon? And the whole world saw and heard but it didn't respond. In those difficult moments many hard-to-describe ideas bubbled in my soul, but in the end they produced an intense feeling of rejection of tyranny, and gave birth to a strong resolve to punish the oppressors.And as I looked at those demolished towers in Lebanon, it entered my mind that we should punish the oppressor in kind and that we should destroy towers in America in order that they taste some of what we tasted and so that they be deterred from killing our women and children.

You don't have to believe bin-Laden. But you have to understand what he's saying, and understand how he's presenting his actions to the Muslim world. Giuliani doesn't. In this, as in so much else, he's showing his fundamental ignorance of American foreign policy, the terrorist threat, and the dynamics of the current conflict.